The course of migration for the Scotch-Irish was closely paralleled by a large muigration from Germany. Both started about 1717, the German immigration coming principally from the Rhineland Palatinate. They entered through ports in Pennsylvania along the Delaware and by 1736 a steady flow of settlers hand entered Virginia and by 1750 were travelling into North Carolina.
Those who disembarked at the various ports of entry linger in the towns only a short while. if they became indentured servants, they stayed only as long as needed to service their endenture. They were farmers, once they had their bearings, and found where land was available, they equipped themselves with what they could afford in the way of implements and livestock: and at first traveled the thirty or forty miles west or north of Philadelphia-- to the frontier and obtained farms. As the years came and went the miles became further in order to reach good inexpensive land for farming.
As the Germans, chiefly Lutherans and Reformed in religion arrived, they settled one part of a river valley and the Scotch-Irish who arrived simultaneously with them, settled another part of the valley with the next years arrivals advancing beyond the settlements to repeat the process.
In the great valley of the Susquehanna, westward motion was delayed until homemakers had fanned out to the hillsin the north; but soon the river was crossed, and the rhythm was repeated. By 1732 the same process began to exhibit itself in western Marylandand the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, and after 1750 was carried on southward into the Carolinas. The "Great Philadelphia Wagon Road" extending eventually all the way down to upper South Carolina a distance of about 700 miles.
The Germans were noted for being orderly, industrious, and carefully frugal, they rarely had trouble with Indians; if they interested themselves at all in politics, it was usually on the local level. The Germans who took advantage of the limestone regions and made them into the most productive farms of colonial times settled the counties of Virginia (Shenandoah, Augusta and Rockingham).
Most of the Valley of Virginia was a vast prairie, showing to pioneers a vista of fertile territory, making settlement easy and rapid. The Indians, who used the Whole Valley for hunting, had created the prairie. At the close of each hunting season they set fire to the open ground, thus keeping it from reverting to woodland. This was done to attract the buffalo, and animals that shunned forest and lived on grasslands. (Source History of the Valley of Virginia, E.E. Keister, 1925.)
By the l740s both Scotch-Irish and Germans by the thousands, having traversed the Great Valley and the Shenandoah, Went eastward through the Staunton River gap of the Blue Ridge, 5“ung southward again close to the Blue Ridge, crossed the rugged territory of the Blackwater, Pigg, and Irvine streams, until, beyond the Dan River, the path opened out into the wide spaces of the Carolina Piedmont. ..their destination was the province of North Carolina. (Source: The Scotch-Irish, A Social History, by James G. Leybum, pp. 185-229. (The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1961.)
Our search for ties between Hans Ulrich and Wooldrich (Frederick) Fritz have taken us up many avenues, including a Charlotte Observer Newspaper article, Five Generations In One N.C. Family ”Shot" At One Sitting, the photograph included William Fritz (1843) and members of his family. The article was written by Rev. Jacob C. Leonard, D.D., and appeared on Sunday, August 21, 1932. It indicated that Wooldrich arrived in America on the ship "Elizabeth" at the Port of Philadelphia. We have found that Hans Ulrich Fritz was listed as the father of Wooldrich Fritz in the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) records Nos. 269266 and 539883, for Wooldrich Fritz and George Fritts, Sr., respectively. Also, that George, Sr. was the son of Wooldrich.
